'Mabrook' to PA President Abbas' son Tareq

A view of the the high-end flat in Merchant Square East in London [Jason Gwynne/Al Jazeera]

The son of the Palestinian Authority president Tareq Abbas is already said to own villas in Amman, Jordan and a rooftop pad in Beirut, Lebanon.

Now, according to a review of official British Land Registry records from 2012, the world can know Tareq registered - under his legal name - the purchase of a $1.5m luxury two-bedroom flat in Merchant Square East, one of London's many high-end developments.

A screenshot of real estate documents showing Tareq Abbas' ownership of a high-end London flat

Realtors hawked Tareq's newest address as a "prestigious waterside building" in a "chic, contemporary style with high-specification amenities and furnishings" within walking distance of an area full of "traditional old English pubs and new bars and restaurants".

The building itself is part of "regeneration" taking place around Paddington Basin to increase investment and property value.

Tareq's flat has stayed largely unoccupied since he bought it, which seems to indicate that he does not need the rental income he could derive from its purchase. A quick calculation shows he could fetch about $4,300 per month in rent.

It was so left to apparent neglect that lawyers representing Merchant Square threatened to sue him in 2014 for "breach of obligations" for more than $6,700 in unpaid parking and storage fees, which he later paid.

Tareq failed to respond to Al Jazeera's questions about his finances or how he came to own the place. No doubt he is aware that most Palestinians, with an average yearly gross national income of $3,060, couldn't afford to rent the London apartment of their president's son for even a single month.

Nor is Tareq the only multimillionaire in the Abbas family. The president's eldest living son, Yasser, made his fortunes from, among other things, the monopoly sale of US-made cigarettes in the occupied territories, offering Lucky Strikes and other carcinogens to Palestine's tobacco-addicted.

Which must leave Palestinians wondering: are their financial blessings merely the result of being "Grade A businessmen", as Yasser once famously remarked?

The brothers Abbas enjoy a personal wealth that eludes nearly all their compatriots. Average Palestinians could hardly be faulted for questioning whether Papa President played a part. (Attorneys for Yasser claim the reverse is true - that "politics often affects the business of Mr Abbas negatively".)

The same tranche of Panama Papers also revealed that the Palestinian Authority's billion-dollar investment portfolio, the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF), owns 18 percent of APIC.

Incidentally, President Abbas, as head of the Palestinian Authority, wields significant influence over the PIF's activities. I presume his children would have us believe their dad leaves the room any time APIC or his children's business pursuits are mentioned in the course of his official duties.

Little wonder that a May 2016 poll reported on by the Associated Press showed that almost all Palestinians - 95.5 percent - believe there is corruption in Abbas' government.

But you won't hear much public airing about these complaints within the little Area A statelet President Abbas lords over like a mini Caesar. This is territory, of course, where dissidents are disappeared and tortured, websites are closed, and journalists are surveilled and harassed.

But that doesn't stop people from thinking that corruption is rampant. Since his own kids do so little to correct that widely held impression, one can only conclude they don't give a damn. Why should they?

The last time Abbas faced the voters was 10 years ago, and no future poll is in the offing.

As for managing negative publicity, Tareq should know a thing or two about how to minimise it. He has held a variety of profitable leadership functions with the Ramallah-based Sky Advertising Company over the years, and now serves as Sky's Chairman of the Board.

Sky's specific mission was to "improve the image of the United States in the occupied territories", which then, as now, is sorely in need of improving.

Former US President George W Bush's 2002 "roadmap for peace", endorsed by President Abbas, aimed for a Palestinian state by the end of 2005. The music stopped as 2005 came and went, and no doubt the embarrassed and double-crossed Palestinian Authority officials went scrambling for chairs.

The Americans may have sent them on a fool's errand. But at least they were charitable enough to throw the president's kid a contract to make some money.

Alas, nearly 10 years later, we learn that Tareq was kind enough to recycle his hard-earned occupation dollars back into the Western economy.